If you've
been thinking about developing a carbon footprint standard or methodology for
your product or industry, we've got great news. The World Resources Institute (WRI) has just
announced a new process by which organizations can develop, test, finalize, and
propagate carbon accounting sector guidance, product rules, and calculation
tools.

GHG Protocol has recently developed a “Built on GHG Protocol” mark, or
logo, and has finalized the process through which sector guidance, product
rules, and calculation tools can obtain it. This is a significant development
as it is the first formalized way for calculation tools and other documents to
demonstrate conformance with GHG Protocol Standards. A major benefit of the
mark is that it enables a greater scale-up of GHG accounting resources
consistent with our standards. While the GHG Protocol creates standards and
tools that are applicable to any organization, company, or sector, additional
guidance and tools are often developed to increase usability and provide more
specificity. By working with GHG Protocol through the development of these
documents and tools it will be possible to ensure they follow the requirements
and key guidance within our standards.

Why should you care?

There are
several international standards for greenhouse gas emissions accounting,
including the GHG Protocol developed
by WRI and World Business Council for
Sustainable Development (WBCSD). These standards set out processes for
determining a product carbon footprint. However since the standards are
intended to apply universally, to any product in any sector, they can be broad
and sometimes confusing.

For example,
a company may choose to use primary data from its own facilities (and its
suppliers) or secondary data from an established data set. It may also choose
to consider impact all the way to product disposal, or may choose to stop when
it reaches the customer. Under the current guidelines, all of these choices are
permissible as long as the resulting calculation explains where and why these
decisions were made.

So what's the problem?

If you are
an organization investing time, effort, and money on calculating the greenhouse
gas impacts of your product line, it is probably important to you to know that
other organizations within your industry are also following the same standards.
You'd want to know they were making the same choices in terms of where the data
came from, how far to take the calculation, and how to determine materiality.

Similarly,
you might not want to develop your own methodology for determining the carbon
footprint of your product. You might instead want to share the burden of the
research and development with other industry peers. We've seen several industry
groups and trade associations use the GHG Protocol to develop sector guidance
for how to apply the Protocol to a particular product line or industry.

Until now,
however, there has been no formal way to develop such guidance in alignment,
and with explicit approval, from WRI. With this new announcement, we are
excited to see where product carbon footprinting goes. Be on the lookout for
new sector guidance, product rules, and calculation tools! With a little luck
and some more hard work, this should significantly advance the process of
product carbon footprinting across-the-board.

If you're interested in calculating the carbon
footprint of your product(s), please contact us to
discuss our life cycle
assessment (LCA) services. We use awesome technology that allows us not
just to calculate the greenhouse gas emissions associated with a product, but
also the cost of energy, waste, and water per product unit. That can help you
identify hot spots of opportunity -- to reduce your environmental impact, but
also to save money!

We're offering a free 1-hour phone call for companies seeking to develop a climate change strategy. It's only for the first five companies that contact us, so if your organization would like some complimentary assistance in your process, email us today!